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Hello!
Can anybody help me? I recently bought a Canon eos 400d to use on a college course I'm doing. I have to shoot using studio lighting next week and I need to find a Canon hotshoe adaptor to attach it to the pc sync lead. I have bought a cheap hotshoe to pc socket adaptor off Ebay but my teacher said if I use it my Canon may blow up (!) and I really don't want that! My teacher also said that I would have to get a hotshoe adaptor especially made for Canon cameras so that it doesn't get damaged. Do Canon make any or there any out there that are made especially for Canon eos 400d? If so where do I get them from and how much do they roughly cost? I have searched on the Canon website but can't find any information on there. Help!
You need a Kaiser hotshoe adapter and they are £6.99 through the epz shop. Good luck.
Dave
Edit, sorry just read the rest of your post. I have used Kaisers on hundreds of different Nikons (digital and film) and Fuji cameras without a single problem. We used to weld the sync cable into the kaiser hotshoe as most failures (and I mean flash not firing not blowing up)occurred through the sync socket (assuming the photographer hadnt put a chair leg on the cable!) Never used one on a Canon but I wouldnt hesitate to, I cant believe it would blow up! The hotshoe attachment diverts the electrical pulse, triggered by the shutter curtain opening, to the sync socket in the accessory via the hotshoe, it doesnt send a charge to the camera. If there was a problem with the flash it would blow a fuse in the flash head, which is what usually happens. Go for it I would suggest, unless anyone knows any different
Hi there, trigger voltages from studio lights can exceed the safe voltage limit for your 400D (I think it is 5.5volts) even some battery powered flashguns can exceed this many times over. I think your tutor is referring to a "Weinsafe" which fits onto the hotshoe and safely restricts the voltage from flashguns. These are not cheap, an alternative would be to get an infra-red trigger from somewhere like 7dayshop (@£17 plus postage)
;0)
The Kaiser adaptor is all plastic, made in two halves held together by two screws. It does have a tendency to come adrift if roughly handled. All makes are the same, they just transfer the centre pin of the hotshoe to a female sync socket. I have a couple which have aluminum bodys and are far superior. No adaptor is safe, you require a safe sync if your external flash is not Canon.
Certain setups of the camera will give a preflash before the main taking flash, therefore the studio flash will fire to early. I am toying around with a preflash eliminator that I made to overcome this problem.
Hello to everyone who has answered! I really appreciate it. I have decided to get a Wein Safe Sync (thanks for the advice big fella). To the other people who have answered me thanks for the help but as I am pretty new to the world of studio lighting (I have only used it once before) I really don’t understand the jargon. Can anyone explain to me what slave units are and how I would use the on camera flash with them to trigger studio lights? Also if I did use the Wein Safe Sync with my camera then how would I overcome the problem of the preflash making the studio lights fire too early (mentioned by stan walker above)?
Suppose you have two portable flash guns - one attached to the camera and the other that you want to fire at the same time as the one on the camera. Well, you attach a slave unit to the off-camera flashgun. This is a small, light-sensitive device: when the on-camera flash fires, the slave unit detects the light and tells the off-camera flash to fire. This all happens at the speed of light, so the two flashes go off at the same time (give or take a nanosecond). Have a look at this picture, which shows a small flashgun attached to a slave unit. This particular slave unit has a hot-shoe mount so that the flashgun can be attached in exactly the same way as it would be attached to your camera.
Moving into the studio, many studio flashes have a slave unit built in. Check with your teacher whether this is the case for the kit you will be using. If not you can buy a slightly different model of slave rather like this one, which has a socket in it designed to accept a cable with a plug on the end called a PC cord. (NB: I don't know whether the particular model illustrated is suitable for use with studio flash - check with the shop before buying.)
You still need to use either the flash built in to the camera or a separate flash mounted on top of the camera. This need only be very low power, since it is not being used for illuminating the subject but to trigger the main flash.
Some cameras when switched into certain modes will emit a small flash either to help reduce red-eye or so that the camera can calculate exposure. You don't want that to happen so check your camera's manual to find out how to switch off that feature. I don't have a Canon 400D so I can't answer that one.
Hope that helps.
John
Edit: You say you have used studio lighting once before. How did you trigger the flash on that occassion ?
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